Former U.S. Judge William H. Hastie, in a public statement issued this week, declared he resigned as civilian aide to the U.S. Secretary of War Stimson because of reactionary policies and discriminatory practices affecting colored servicemen in the Air Corps.
Publicly he added that there were other reasons also besides those affecting the Air Corps, but the Air Corps was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Judge Hastie said he quit when he was convinced that recommendations within the Department were futile, and he was taking the only course he felt would bring results – an appeal to public opinion.
Before stepping down, he counselled colored soldiers to square their shoulders and do their best – confident that millions of Americans outside the Armed Forces and more persons than he knows in high places within the military establishment will never cease fighting to remove every racial barrier and humiliating practice now confronting them.
The judge said that the Army Air Force was reluctant to accept colored men. The Jim Crow flying field at Tuskegee was set up over his objections, and the segregated officer candidate school at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, without his knowledge.
Not wanting colored fliers, he said the Air Force doubted their capacity and created special so-called aviation squadrons for colored only. These are in reality labor battalions for performance of odd jobs. There are no equivalent white labor units in the service.
Sufficient ground crew mechanics were not trained, and all colored applicants for weather officers or other special flying officers, including service pilots, were rejected. Full medical training was refused colored medical flying officers.
Judge Hastie described discrimination and segregation even at the Army’s colored flying school at Tuskegee as so demoralizing as to affect the entire future of the colored soldier in combat aviation.
The Air Command, he concluded, is not on the right road – directing its policies and practices so as to develop the spirit in colored soldiers that they are the best men in the best unit in the best army in the world.
Reactionary policies and discriminatory practices of the Army Air Forces in matters affecting colored men were the immediate cause of my resignation as Civilian Aide to the Secretary of War.
The Army Air Forces are growing in importance and independence. In the post-war period, they may become the greatest single component of the armed services. Biased policies and harmful practices established in this branch of the Army can all too easily infect other branches as well. The situation had become critical.
Yet, the whole course of my dealings with the Army Air Forces convinced me that further expression of my views in the form of recommendations within the Department would be futile. I, therefore, took the only course which can, I believe, bring results. Public opinion is still the strongest force in American life.
To the colored soldier and those who influence his thinking, I say with all the force and sincerity at my command that the men in uniform must grit his teeth, square his shoulders and do his best as a soldier, confidence that there are millions of Americans outside of the armed services, and more persons that he knows in high places within the military establishment, who will never cease fighting to remove every racial barrier and every humiliating practice which now confronts him. But only by being at all times a first-class soldier can the man in uniform help in this battle which shall be fought and won.
When I took office, the Secretary of War directed that all questions of policy and important proposals relating to colored men should be referred to my office for comment or approval before final action. In December 1940, the Air Forces referred to me a plan for a segregated training center for colored pursuit pilots at Tuskegee. I expressed my entire disagreement with the plan, giving my reasons in detail. My views were disregarded. Since then, the Air Command has never on its own initiative submitted any plan or project to me for comment or recommendation. What information I obtained, I had to seek out. Where I made proposals or recommendations, I volunteered them.
This situation reached its climax in late December 1942, when I learned through Army press releases sent out from St. Louis and from the War Department in Washington that the Air Command was about to establish a segregated officer candidate school at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri, to train Negro officers for ground duty with the Army Air Forces. Here was a proposal for a radical departure from present Army practice, since the officer candidate-training program is the one large field where the Army is eliminating racial segregation.
Moreover, I had actually written to the Air Command several weeks earlier in an attempt to find out what was brewing at Jefferson Barracks. The Air Command replied as late as Dec. 17, 1942, giving not even the slightest hint of any plan for a segregated officer candidate school. It is inconceivable to me that consideration of such a project had not then advanced far enough for my office to have been consulted, even if I had not made specific inquiry. The conclusion is inescapable that the Air Command does not propose to inform, much less counsel with, this office about its plans for Negroes.
But the reactionary policies and discriminatory practices of the Air Forces are much more serious a man’s capacity and aptitudes. The tragedy is that by not wanting the colored man in the first place and by doubting his capacity, the Air Command has committed itself psychologically to courses of action which themselves become major obstacles to the success of colored men in the Air Forces.
The colored program of the Air Forces began some two years ago with the organization of several so-called “Aviation Squadrons (Separate).” These units, now greatly increased in number, were organized to serve no specific military need. They have never had a defined function.
Except as individual commanders on their own initiative have found some military function for particular small groups of men, the characteristic assignment of the “Aviation Squadron (Separate)” has been the performance of odd jobs of common labor which arise from time to time at airfields. There are no equivalent white organizations.
“Aviation Squadrons (Separate)” would never have come into existence except for the necessity of making some provision for colored enlisted men in the Air Forces. Reluctant to use colored started off on the wrong foot by men at all, the Air Command organizing some colored labor units, while every effort was being made to recruit white volunteers with mechanical ability for skilled service.
Somewhat later, in order to provide enlisted technicians for the new air base at Tuskegee, a few colored soldiers were accepted for technical training at Chanute Field where a large school is maintained. The men were well received and did excellent work.
I urged the importance of continuing such training of colored men in this existing unsegregated school. But the program stopped with the first group. The Air Forces then made efforts to set up segregated technical training at Tuskegee or elsewhere. Difficulties were encountered. Meanwhile, successive classes of colored pilots were being trained, but no technical schooling of supporting ground crew members was in progress.
Thus, even the segregated program got badly out of balance in the effort to effect its extension, the prospect is that in 1943, even with a tardy resumption of technical ground training, colored pilots will be ready before the faster than adequate numbers of trained ground crews are available.
The Air Forces, however, do need large numbers of additional weather officers so badly that white volunteers are being solicited and accepted, despite a general policy against voluntary enlistments in the Army. Yet, it is unthinkable to those in authority that a colored officer can fill such a position except at Tuskegee.
The same situation exists in armament and engineering, both ground specialties for which the Air Forces have been accepting cadets generally, but refusing colored men.
To date, all colored applicants, a number of them well and fully qualified for appointment as Army service pilots, have been rejected. Two applicants were actually instructed to report for training. They did soi but were sent home as soon as it was discovered that they were colored men. I am advised that this matter is receiving further study.
The simple fact is that the Air Command does not want colored pilots flying in and out of various fields, eating, sleeping and mingling with other personnel, as a service pilot must do in carrying out his various missions.
Colored medical officers in the Air Forces are getting only part of the special training in aviation medicine which is available. They are not admitted to the principal school of aviation medicine at Randolph Field. Even the branch school program in which it is represented that colored officers share without discrimination is in fact discriminatory.
Many white officers enrolled at branch schools of aviation medicine have the opportunity of full-time resident study. The colored officer is permitted to commute periodically from his home station at Tuskegee for work at the Maxwell Field branch school. Such grudging partial tender of makeshift schemes may be expected to continue unless a genuine change of racial attitude and policy occurs in the Air Command.
While colored trainees and cadets at the Tuskegee Air Base have done well from a strictly technical point of view, they have suffered such demoralizing discrimination and segregation that, in my judgment, the entire future of the colored man in combat aviation is in danger. Men cannot be humiliated over a long period of time without a loss of combat efficiency.
Specifically, colored and white officers serving at Tuskegee in the common enterprise of training colored men for air combat have separate messes. They are not permitted to have quarters in the same building. Separate toilet facilities have been provided. If the group of white officers at Tuskegee insist upon this – and I have no evidence that they do – they are psychologically unsuited to trained colored men for combat. If they do not so insist, the racial attitude of the local commander or of higher authority is all the more apparent.
Despite original design to advance colored officers and to place them in posts of administrative responsibility at Tuskegee as rapidly as they should qualify, that design is not being carried out in the post administration, except in the station hospital.
Early in the history of the Tuskegee project, a colored soldier guarding a warehouse was disarmed and arrested by civilian authorities because he had challenged a white civilian.
From then on, friction continued. A new commander was appointed. He disarmed colored military policemen assigned to patrol duty in the town of Tuskegee.
A recent member of the Alabama State Police force was assigned to Tuskegee as an Army officer with duties related to his civilian experience. The colored soldier was embittered but the prejudiced community was somewhat mollified.
Fundamentally, it seems to me the Air Command has either failed to comprehend or failed to care that its policies and practices are tending to tear down rather than build up the pride, dignity and self-respect which colored soldiers, like all other soldiers must possess if they are to achieve maximum combat efficiency.
Military men agree that a soldier should be made to feel that he is the best man, in the best unit in the best army in the world. When the Air Command shall direct its policies and practices so as to help rather than hinder the development of such spirit among its colored soldiers, it will be on the right road.
